Encounters of the Flying Kind

Most people know that the library is infested with bats. In fact, I was told that after a fire drill a few weeks ago, over 66 bats were inside.

Now I'm not really one to be afraid of animals. I tolerate spiders and snakes pretty well. Flying animals have given me problems in the past, (I am so afraid of the pigeons in Venice! Including one named Dyer, but that's another story) but I didn't think bats would be a problem. They look like birds right? And I've seen them from far away at Carlsbad Caverns.

Well, I'd never seen one at the library but joked with a friend yesterday that I would go up to the 6th and probably still not see one. I was up there for about 30 minutes without a single sighting, and although some mechanical guys walked by and acted like they were on a mission, after following them, they just told me they were checking out the books and I went on my way disappointed.

I went into the women's bathroom, realizing that my whole 64 oz. of water a day goal really makes you visit there frequently. I walked into the second stall and suddenly notice something brown floating in the water. Grossed out, I turn around to walk out and try another stall, then briefly think to flush this grossness down for the next person. At second glance I realize that the brown thing floating in the water is kind of spiky and...was that a twitch?

Instantly I realized that this lovely floating thing I have encountered is not your typical toilet muck...no my friends, it was a bat. A little brown bat, floating in the toilet water, in the second stall, of the 6th floor girls' bathroom. Eek!

I squeaked to myself, trying not to rouse the critter (even if it might have been dead) and rushed out of the bathroom, thoroughly disturbed and shuddering to myself.

As I'm walking down the stairs I'm trying to think of how exactly I'm going to word this disturbing news to the front desk security guy...and how ironic it was that I had been laughing with my friend just an hour before about how I'd never seen a bat and was brave enough to go up there anyway...and how now I understood why he wasn't too keen on being on the 6th floor.

I debrief the security guy, who seems surprisingly not that surprised, besides the bit about the toilet water...and I tell him that it may or in fact may not be dead. (I later told this story to my friend Matt who commented that it just may have gotten thirsty after being enclosed in the girls' bathroom all night. Perhaps so, but why float? Had it drowned?) The security guy wrote the report, and I made a quick sign to stick on the door so no other girl would have quite the same encounter with the flying kind as I had.

And to think, I might have sat down on that bat without knowing it!